


Breathe It In (And Out)

by SilenceIsGolden15



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo 2k18 [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Anxiety, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Electricity, Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Prompt: Forced to Watch, Protective Hunk (Voltron), Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 04:53:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16033376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilenceIsGolden15/pseuds/SilenceIsGolden15
Summary: Hunk and Keith are snatched by Druids, and they have some unique ideas on how to break them.





	Breathe It In (And Out)

“Open your eyes, Yellow Paladin.”

With a muffled sob, Hunk obeyed the Druid’s instructions. The room was dark, lit only by a line of the usual purple lights along the edge of the floor. It cast all the shadows in the room upward, making the already terrifying druids just that much scarier. 

“Don’t look away again.” The Druid looming over his shoulder warned. Hunk was trussed up against the wall, hands bound with magnetic cuffs and attached to a metallic beam around the ceiling, just tall enough to make him balance on his tiptoes. His shoulders were already aching. “If you do, who knows if he’ll be alive when you look back.”

Hunk was trying really hard. He kept blinking to try and clear his vision, sending the tears rolling over the edges of his cheekbones and out from under his visor. He knew why the Druids wanted him to keep his eyes open-- they wanted him to see what they were doing to Keith. They wanted to scare him into offering up information about Voltron. 

He was considering it. 

The other Druid was leaning over Keith’s crumpled form, and as Hunk made himself keep watching black lightning danced from its clawed fingertips, and Keith’s spine arched. He was trying to keep his screams trapped behind his teeth, but it didn’t stop the sound from bouncing around the room. New tears welled up in Hunk’s eyes and he blinked them away. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes, turn his head, curl up in a ball with his hands over his ears-- but he couldn’t. He didn’t know if the Druid’s were serious in their threat to kill Keith if he looked away, but he wasn’t willing to risk it, either.

After a few seconds that felt like a few eons, the lightning ceased and Keith went limp, harsh pants replacing screams. His helmet had been removed and tossed away so that Hunk would get a good view of his face when it twisted into a grimace, but the rest of his armor remained, apparently doing little to suppress the electricity. For a second Hunk thought he’s passed out (and honestly who could blame him) until Keith turned his head and looked back at him.

Tired tears were tracing down his face, but his eyes were clear.

“Hunk.” He rasped out, and the Druid’s leaned forward eagerly. They probably expect him to beg. They were idiots. “It’s gonna be ok. We’re gonna be ok.”

That just made Hunk cry harder. Here was Keith, being tortured by some sort of supernatural alien being, and he’s trying to make  _ Hunk  _ feel better. Trying to keep him from breaking. 

This displeased the Druid, and it struck again with its lightning, making Keith writhe as the cries were torn painfully from his throat.

This time it didn’t stop, it kept going, and once it passed the five second mark Hunk began to panic. 

The human body wasn’t meant to withstand this many volts for so long, his heart was going to stop, the Druids were going to kill him without even meaning to and it was going to be Hunk’s fault-- he couldn’t stop it bound here the way he was and he couldn’t even give Keith the dignity of not witnessing his vulnerability--

_ “Hunk!” _

He startled. While his brain had been running around in frenzied circles the Druid had ceased its attack, and both were now cooly observing what was going to happen next. 

“Hunk, look at me.” He was. “At my face.” Oh. 

His heart was pounding in his ears. The familiar tightening in his chest told him he was breathing too fast. The cuffs rattled as his hands shook.

He looked at Keith’s face.

It was paper white, eyes too wide and breath coming nearly as quickly as Hunk’s, but he was keeping his cool. Maybe by a thread, but he was keeping it. 

“Hunk.” He said again. His voice was wrecked and cracking. “I need you to calm down. Please. I know it’s hard, I know you’re afraid, but you need to breathe.”

His breath caught in his throat, and Hunk tearfully shook his head.

“I can’t, I can’t--” It was shameful, really, that he couldn’t keep calm when he wasn’t even the one being hurt, but Keith didn’t yell at him. 

“You can. Listen to me.”

Hunk swallowed back his fear and tried to listen. 

“Breathe. Count the seconds. In for four, hold seven, out eight. You can do it.”

This pattern was familiar. His mom had taught it to him on his first day of kindergarten when he was too afraid to venture out from behind her skirt. Somewhere underneath the buzz of fear, he wondered how Keith knew it. 

“Ok, ok.” He murmured, half to himself. He almost closed his eyes before he remembered, and kept them open and locked on Keith’s as he breathed. 

In, two, three, four.

Hold.

Out, six, seven, eight. 

“Good.” Croaked Keith. “You’re doing good. Again.”

Hunk obeyed, wondering how Keith knew how to do this. Brash, angry Keith, who was more likely to explode than console. 

The Druid who had been doing the torturing growled, unhappy.

“Shut him up.” It snapped, and the one who’d been taunting Hunk floated over to Keith’s head. Kneeling down, it clamped a clawed hand over Keith’s mouth. The second Druid started up again with the lightning and Hunk’s breath stuttered, but Keith’s eyes were burning at him so he forced himself to keep counting. 

The electricity ended abruptly when the door to the cell slid open, and Keith slumped against the floor, breathing laboriously over the Druid’s hand. Both Druids glared at who had interrupted, anger evident even through their creepy bone masks. 

“What?” Snarled the torturer. “Can’t you see we are busy?”

The Galra soldier at the door gulped. 

“Apologies, but Lady Haggar requests your presence at once. All the Druids are required for the Emperor’s searching ritual.”

Hunk never thought he’d be so grateful for Zarkon’s unending obsession with the Black Lion as the Druids exchanged an unreadable look and backed away from Keith. Before it followed its brother out of the room, the Druid who’d spoken to him earlier floated back to Hunk. It smelled of ozone, and no breath fanned over Hunk’s face when he spoke. 

“Be prepared, Yellow Paladin.” It said, making Hunk shiver. “You’ll be next when we return.” 

With that last threat, it swept out of the cell, the door locking behind it. 

For a long moment there’s silence, both paladins trying to catch their breath. Hunk curls his hands in his cuffs, trying to get some blood back into the tingling appendages. He’s cold to the bone with striking, paralyzing fear. 

Keith speaks first, stirring with a groan. “We’ll figure something out,” He says, voice almost gone. “I’ll get us out. I just-- just need a second--”

And just like that a spark ignites. It’s tiny and trembling under the howl of terror, but it’s there. 

“No.” There is absolutely no way he’s going to make Keith be the one to break them out after everything he’s gone through already. 

“What?” Hunk doesn’t answer-- he needs to focus. He looks up at his cuffs, narrowing his eyes at the schematics his helmet has pulled up for him. Yeah, that would work.

Shifting his weight forward on his toes, he slammed back against the wall as hard as he could. His shoulder and wrists jolted painfully, but he ignored them. He also ignored Keith when he asked what he’s doing and does it again. 

Three slams later he achieves his goal-- the glass displaying the readouts on the cuffs shatters. Hunk contorts his fingers, shoving them into the cuffs and searching for the correct wires. He hisses when the remaining glass slices through his gloves and into his fingers, but pushes onwards. 

After five minutes and three pauses to regulate his breathing he finally disengages the cuffs and falls to his knees, trying not to grimace at the pain in his shoulders. 

“Hunk? How did you do that?”

A grunt is his only answer. He has to keep going before the spark goes out. If he stops he’ll be frozen. So he climbs to his feet and heads across the room to fiddle with the door controls, ripping the cover off of the wall with his bare hands. 

A click and a spark and the door slides open, and Hunk hurries back to Keith. His eyes are heavy lidded, and occasionally his muscles jerk from the remnants of the shocks, but he’s smiling at Hunk with the most gentle expression Hunk has ever seen on him. 

“Good job, bud.” He murmurs, and he sounds so much like Shiro it actually makes Hunk laugh. 

“Come on.” He hauls one of Keith’s arms over his shoulder. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

* * *

Five minutes out from the base their radios finally clicked as they get within the Castle’s range, and almost immediately Lance’s voice was in his ear, high pitched and panicked.   

“Hunk? Where the heck have you been? We’ve been hailing you for hours!”

“I’ll explain later.” He barked once he realized Keith wasn’t going to answer, focused fully on staying conscious and flying his lion. “We’re on our way back. Have a cryopod ready.”

Stunned silence from Lance, allowing Pidge to jump in. “For you or for Keith?”

“Keith.”

“Ten-four.”

The radio goes dead, though only for a minute or two before Shiro’s voice crackled in. 

“Hunk.” His voice was low and concerned. “How bad is he?”

“I’m ok, Shiro.” Said Keith, finally. Even over the radio it’s clear how thin his voice is, how hard he’s breathing. Shiro doesn’t sound reassured.

“Just get back as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting for you.”

* * *

Since he came up with their break out plan, Hunk’s vision had been astoundingly tear free. That came to a pretty definitive end when he left his lion and saw the look on Shiro’s face as he rushed up to Red. He didn’t even notice Lance had been waiting for them until the Blue Paladin crashed into him, gripping him tight in an octopus hug. 

“Jesus, buddy, you scared me half to death.”

Hunk was full on sobbing now, bending over to bury his face into Lance’s shoulder. The spark had been extinguished and now he was trembling in the adrenaline crash. 

“I-- I was s-so scared.” He didn’t even mind how much he was blubbering, because they were home now and it was ok not to look, to not pretend to be brave. “They-- they wouldn’t stop, I thought they were gonna k-kill him, and he just kept--” His voice broke as Lance dragged his fingers through Hunk’s hair, having pulled his helmet off at some point. 

“It’s ok buddy, you’re safe now, it’s ok.”

Hunk raised his head, blinking the tears away in time to see Shiro helping Keith out of the hangar. Keith was still mostly on his feet, thank god, though in the light of the Castle the scorch marks on his armor were painfully obvious. 

“Come on.” Lance tugged on his hand. “Let’s get you cleaned up, ok? Your hands are looking kinda rough.”

Hunk let Lance drag him to his bunk, got changed out of his armor as he was instructed, and sat quiet and still on his bed as Lance carefully bandaged the cuts on his fingers and the rubbed raw skin around his wrists. Silent tears made their way down his face still; he couldn’t seem to make them stop. 

“So what happened?” Lance ventured to ask once the last bandage was on, smoothing the edge with his thumb. Hunk gulped.

“The Druids caught us.” Lance sucked in a harsh breath and tensed, but by this point Hunk was so numb and tired he couldn’t reciprocate the reaction. “They didn’t hurt me, but they hurt Keith, and they wouldn’t let me look away.”

Lance slithered an arm over his shoulders and gave a comforting squeeze. 

“And the whole time he was talking to me. Trying to reassure me. He kept saying everything would be ok. He talked me through my breathing.” He paused to sniffle. “He was the one being hurt but he just kept trying to comfort  _ me _ .”

Hunk buried his face in his hands, and Lance couldn’t seem to find the words to answer. So he didn’t, and the two of them sat in the silence. 

* * *

When Hunk shuffled into the med bay late that night, unable to sleep with Keith’s screams still echoing in his ears, he wasn’t surprised to see Shiro sitting in front of Keith’s pod.

“How is he?” He asked, and Shiro didn’t even startle at the sound of his voice. He merely looked over with a tired attempt at a smile.

“He’ll be ok. Coran said he’ll be out by the morning.”

Hunk moved over to sit next to him without an answer, and for a little bit they just sat there, linked in their fear and their guilt. 

“I wanted to say thanks.” Shiro said eventually, making Hunk look up in shock. “For getting you both out of there. You did well.”

Hunk is shaking his head before Shiro can even finish his sentence.

“It wasn’t me. It was him. He’s the one who kept me calm. Without him there I would’ve broken.” He looked up at Keith’s pale, still face backlit by the blue glow of the pod and bit his lip to hold back more tears. He’d had enough of them. “He was being tortured, and he kept trying to comfort me.”

And Shiro… Shiro smiled fondly at the pod, eyes shining. “That sounds like him.”

“How did he know?” Hunk isn’t expecting to ask the question, so it takes him a second to decipher Shiro’s confused look. “I mean-- he helped me with my breathing, and I didn’t know he knew about that stuff.”

The fond smile is back, though this time it’s tinted with sadness. 

“I taught him.” Answered Shiro. “When he was younger he’d have panic attacks sometimes, so I taught him that to help him calm down.”

Hunk is absolutely thrown. Back at the Garrison Keith had always seemed so confident… it was hard to imagine that young spitfire feeling the way Hunk did when he panicked. 

“He helps me sometimes, now.” Shiro continued to reveal. “When I’m having a hard time.” 

“That’s… really nice.”

“Still. You did a good job, Hunk.”

Hunk doesn’t answer. He’s too busy staring up at Keith, running over every memory and interaction he had with him, trying to match the idea of the boy he had with the actual facts.

They didn’t match at all. 

“We should probably both get some sleep.” Shiro is saying. Hunk nods along, but he’s not really listening. Instead he’s making a mental note to include Keith more-- invite him to their movie nights, find out his favorite foods and make them for him, maybe even get Lance to be nice. 

After everything, it’s the least he can do. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> shhhhhh I know it's similar to the one with lance say nothing


End file.
